Dawn of War: Soulstorm - Review

Title: Dawn of War: Soulstorm
Format: PC
Price: £19.99
Release Date: Out Now
Published: 2/5/08

So, here we have the third and final expansion for the Dawn of War. For those who haven’t played the original, it’s an RTS set in the Warhammer 40,000 universe. And if that hasn’t already sold you then, well, why are you reading a review of a computer game? Shouldn’t you be outside playing football or something?

What’s new? Well, we have two new races to add to the already impressive roster of seven from the prior games; the Sisters of Battle and the Dark Eldar. A cynical man might say they’re scraping the bottom of the barrel a bit, but they have at least tried to make the new races unique. Each has their own extra resource type; the Sisters accrue Faith, while the Dark Eldar capture the souls of enemies slain on the battlefield. These resources are then used to call down a verity of magical attacks, ranging from revealing stealth units in a local area to the titular Soulstorm, a devastating area of effect spell.

Gameplay-wise, little has changed from the previous expansion, Dark Crusade. The bulk of the campaign is a series of skirmishes against one or two AIs, interspersed with the more structured stronghold missions, which result in the occupying faction being removed from the meta-game map. It still suffers from the same weaknesses as the Dark Crusade campaign, namely the repetitiveness and relative ease of some of the late game missions. This is one of the few games I’ve played that actually has an inverse difficulty curve; the game gets radically easier the more territories you hold.

Still, if you’ve yet to play one of the Dawn of War games, there are worse places to start. If you’re already a fan and own Dark Crusade, you may want to wait for it to drop in price first, as it adds little to the groundwork already laid.

~ by Seniath on April 30, 2008.